To live versus being alive
I have way too much time as of late to contemplate my life, explore small nooks and crannies to see what is in there and where there are bricks that I can (maybe) remove without bringing the whole building tumbling down.
One thing that occurred to me during all this prodding and probing that I am live (I guess that’s good news), still breath and all that jazz, but that I am not alive.
What this means is, while I get up, eat, shit, breath etc. I am not really doing anything significant otherwise…. Okay, that is not quite true either, I do read, I started (finally) to learn Brazilian Portuguese (I need someone local here to practice with though), but at the end of the day it is like I am floating in an isolation tank of life. Not going anywhere, not moving, not hearing, not feeling….
It is frustrating in a way but so far I haven’t been able to figure out what it is exactly that I am missing. I know something is missing, but I don’t even know the shape of the puzzle piece (or pieces) so finding the matching piece is a futile thing, or maybe not. It may just be the one thing that shows up without you really looking for it (like love).
Come to think of it, maybe it is love that is missing? Love (or at least the illusion of it) is something that is rather big on the mind of a lot of people, songs were sung, books and poems written and wars thought, all in the name of love (though the latter lately has only been thought for mundane things like resources, but then what is it worth more dying for? Oil or the (proclaimed) love of your master? I guess for the sob on the battle field it doesn’t matter either way.
But back to me here for a minute. Something is clearly missing, a muse for sure, I didn’t had one in at least two years, my pen has run dry so to speak (and yes, I know that this blog is rather active, and so are some discussion boards at times, but reality is that at the end of the day this is just frustration / disillusion. I guess I could say I am suffering from a severe form of writers block, but that would imply that I was a writer to begin with.
In honesty, it isn’t even so much the lack of writing that bugs me, it is the lack of dreaming, and by this I do not mean the lack of dreams at night (though I do have some obscure ones lately, like last night which I still find mildly disturbing, no, not because of what you may think), but rather my lack of “daydreaming” of “letting go and fly”…. To be kid? Running through the woods, having the imagination turn rocks and trees into beings and structures. Finding a hole in the ground and trying to explore it. Being chased by friends or chasing them. I guess I am missing my innocence in part?
How does one dream? I read Anansi Boys lately, the last book from Neil Gaiman, it is good, well written (unlike some other drivel that rates way higher on the “popular book list” for a lot of people) but it didn’t make me dream. I read “Glass Soup” which I thought was magnificent, but again, it did not had me dream (unlike “White Apples”, which had me mesmerized even long after I had finished reading it).
I think the best I can say right now for my life is that I exist. But I know I want more than just “exist”, everybody exists, most people are perfectly happy to exist, they are happy going to work, going home and then get “filled up” intellectually by TV, or get hammered at the pub or…. Well whatever it is people do.
Ironically enough I am not depressed or anything, I am frustrated, angry… I just don’t know against what or whom. My own inability to dream? I guess that’s part of it. I feel like a painter who has a large, white Canvas, all the colours in the world, brushes, pens…. And yet, nothing to draw. It is infuriating. I read my drivel and I find it wooden, “rough” and overall not “smooth”. My writing is disconnected, like my mind has been scattered across time and space and I am sturggeling, trying to pull it back together, get it on a page and make it matter, if to nobody else than at least myself.
I am in Vancouver now, a city that is considered one of the most livable ones in the world, yet it’s magic eludes me. It looked like the promised land, back in Edmonton and now I am looking around and all I can say is: “Nice”. I wonder if I have “outgrown” it? It is not that I am lusting for a small town feel like Edmonton, it is just that as “nice” as Vancouver feels, it doesn’t feel like a right fit. Neither did Edmonton, but the good thing there was I got away (and I haven’t done that yet with Vancouver), if the only good thing I can say after three months in Vancouver is that I can leave it behind, then maybe I made a wrong choice, bu then it’s all new and nothing has been decided yet.
I think what really screwed me up was my trip through the Rockies last fall. I got to see things that are…. Amazing for the lack of a better word. I was driving around there and listening to Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” and for some reason it fit. Hard to explain how it fit, but it somewhat had something “magic” to it to listen to Shadows adventures while I was climbing up a steep incline in my car, overtaking a biker (pedal variety) wishing I could be on that bike. I wasn’t the same after the tour and this is the really odd thing. I can’t tell you what changed me there, but something did and I think I need to go back there, visit it again and maybe find it, whatever it is.
There have been other things in the last 18 months that promoted changes, I’d like to say that I have become myself more, but I think this is only part of the “deal” I think the way more realistic statement would be that I have been able to open doors that are me. I always have to wonder why people take me as a “good example”, why I seem to make people want to change their lives. Maybe I am not giving myself enough credit, as I am highly critical of myself, but I just can’t see what is worth emulating in my life.
I guess I may quickly approach the point where I will have to make a decision about life itself, where to next, what to do, how to live my life and more importantly maybe where.
Love had a lot to do with it. I had my crushes over the years, I loved some people and twice I was in love with someone. In both cases it ended badly (maybe that is a story worth writing) but it was worth the experience.
Come to think of it…. I always believed “Life is pain” if that is true, maybe the problem is that in the past the person who was suffering and inflicting the pain was one and the same…. Myself? Maybe it is time to “let go” and live with people instead of besides them?
Something to ponder, though I have no idea how to let go of this control aspect. Anybody got any insights?
Over and out…. For now.
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